Me!

Me!
After the Brighton Marathon 2010

Monday, 18 July 2011

I came across this, but it scares me

This promises to be quite an interesting little thingummy, but in all honesty I'm a bit scared to use it!  I haven't given up on the running, by the way.  But the weather's been foul and work has been hard.  I have a week off next week, so I will try to get into some sort of early morning routine while I have the afternoons to recover.  If you do have a play with this, let me know how it turns out.  I don't think it classifies you as a sad old lush or anything, but I want someone else to take the plunge before I do!








Life Insurance, car insurance & credit cards from Sainsbury's Finance

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

Vegetative Fossil Session 3 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details

Told you I'd done it. Uninstall, reinstall, problem (for now) solved.

Vegetative Fossil Session 3 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details

Monday, 4 July 2011

Total technology fail

Did session 3 this evening. Honest. Same as the last 2, but an additional rep for a total of 25 minutes. (15 walking, 10 running.) I covered 2.22 miles. But the GPS cleverness that has excited me failed utterly, also wiping the session from my device's memory. So, for now, if you're even remotely considering getting a Garmin Forerunner 310XT, excited as I was by the seemless interactivity and online history tracking and sharing, DO NOT BOTHER. I may change my mind if their customer service is any better than their product. If it turns out to be a Windows 7 thing I'll be really annoyed. Surely every piece of software should now support this.  Anyway. Bated breath. Garmin, pull your fingers out!

Saturday, 2 July 2011

Seriously considering kicking the booze!

It has been, and you may get bored of my saying this before I get to a stage I feel I can stop, a week from hell at work this week.  I cycled to work on Tuesday, but have not yet felt up to cycling home again and, given the performance that is the putting on of running gear, not bothered either before or after work.

Got steaming drunk on very little (for me) alcohol last night and had a bit of a head when I woke up today. But the weather is on the stunning side of gorgeous and exercise is actually supposed to be a good way of getting rid of the morning after feeling.  So I stiffened the old sinews and headed out to do the second 'absolute beginners' session.  Note the change in language?  I have decided I have to stop putting myself down all the time.  There are plenty of other people to do that!  And I do indeed now feel MUCH better.

Took a different route this time, and managed to cover more distance.  Not sure if that's all down to the route or not.  Am choosing to take it as a signal of improving fitness, however unlikely that might be at this early stage.  New pedometer is proving to be a lot of fun, uploading maps and everything.  This session's map is here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/96198947.  Still working out how to share these maps properly, so they may appear as posts individually for a while until I work it out.

Am looking forward a few months down the line to seeing how much distance I actually cover.  I've tried manually totting it all up in the past, but 21st century tech should do it all for me!  I plan to do a training programme based on the hopeful assumption of getting a place in the 2012 London Marathon.  I'm in no hurry though as I realistically don't need to start proper training until September and given the amount of time I spend staring at spreadsheets at work all week, creating one for any reason in my spare time is not top of the list!

Off to Cambridge this afternoon for fun and frolicks with one of my oldest and bestest friends from Uni days.  Time to freshen up.  Could take a while!

Sunday, 26 June 2011

1st step taken

Woke up this morning and it was all a bit gorillas-in-the-mist.  Bit the bullet and went out for the first session from the running-for-corpses bit of the book anyway.  Actually, ooing and aahing at the new trainers and the new t-shirt and getting various bits and bobs shrouded in lycra without their going all internal (yes, I ALWAYS wear something else on the top, I'm considerate that way) took significantly longer than the run itself.  Plus, having done the warm up exercises I had to stop for a cigarette before I went anywhere.

Anyway, 3minutes walking, 2 minutes running, 4 times, for a total of 20 minutes actually didn't kill me.  Pruning, propping, staking, weeding and trimming this afternoon (having spent a couple of hours in my customary prone position (photo not of me, of my cat, but gives you the picture without the nausea of the real thing!) watching the Grand Prix - great race for the minor positions, but a bot of a Vettel-not-really-in-the-same-race-as-everyone-else yawnfest up the front) in the garden in the FINALLY HERE scorching sunshine has nearly finished me off, though.

In what might turn out to be an excess of enthusiasm, I have also bought cycling shorts in the expectation of cycling to work.  That's not a topic for this blog, though, so will only share if anything remotely interesting happens.  Which it might.  Some of the regular cyclists on my commute are worse than the worst roadrage chavs if you take your time.

If anyone else out there is starting a fitness programme from scratch and happens to come across this, feel free to comment and let me know where you're reporting your progress!  I'll follow and we can set up our own mutual appreciation/support circle.

Sunday dinner and a drink now.  We've decided organising furniture on the decking is beyond our caring capabilities for this weekend.

Byee.

Saturday, 25 June 2011

Time to try again

So, reverted to vegetable status following the Brighton marathon in 2010.  I have put my name down again for London next year - got to do the London marathon in London Olympics year, right?  Having spent a fortune on new kit (always the best bit!) I am now waiting for the promised weekend sunshine to show up.  I'm NOT doing my first run in the rain, it will put me off doing another one and my willpower is, obviously, fairly minimal.

I will be starting from scratch again, using the rather marvellous 'Marathon from start to finish'.  This will include the core strength exercises, which I neglected in my training for Brighton.  This, by the way, was blogged on The Argus website here, and I think I managed to get most of those posts onto here.  Anyway, I will be starting with the build up programme which involves a bunch of run-walks getting me to being able to run for 30 minutes non-stop.  My new GPS pedometer (which is a multi-sport jobbie, I'm thinking of switching to triathlons in future to reduce the load on the old - 40 bloody years old - knees) has wireless auto connecty thing to the Garmin website where I'll be tracking my progress.  If I can share that with you for extra laughs, I will.

Only thing holding me back now is the weather.  COME ON SUNSHINE!